


Tears in heaven

by Taaya



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Always, Beta Wanted, F/M, Heaven, James is a jerk, Snily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 12:34:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9896681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taaya/pseuds/Taaya
Summary: Severus reaches the door to heaven, but what is he to expect?





	1. Present day: Knocking on heaven's door

**Author's Note:**

> This is influenced both by me rewatching Harry Potter 7.2 and afterwards listening to Eric Clapton's 'Tears in Heaven'. 
> 
> In 7.2 I noticed that when summoned by the Resurrection Stone Lily and James not even stand apart from each other with others in between, but also don't even look at each other. I don't know how much of the movie is JKR's doing, but if this little part is, she would have a meaning hidden behind it, as she always has a deeper meaning in everything she wrote. So it got me thinking. And thanks to Eric an idea formed. It escalated and went down a completely different road than I had in mind, but in the end I like this story better than what I actually planned. 
> 
> Copyrights by JKR, Warner Bros. and Eric Clapton. If they were mine, Severus would be, too ;)

_Would you know my name  
if I saw you in heaven?   
Would it be the same  
if I saw you in heaven?_

When he stepped towards the golden doors, the fog of the clouds moving around his feet, she was already there. Reluctantly he stepped forward but stopped outside the fence, staring into her eyes.   
“Severus”, she said, not more than a whisper.   
He felt his throat tighten. For 22 years they had not said a word to each other and for 17 years she had been dead. What was he to say to the woman he still loved more than life - and not only because he had no life left to love. “So … I died”, he stated quietly and she nodded.   
“Quite heroically. Well, you cried, but it was necessary.”   
“You watched?”   
Lily nodded and stretched out her hand to take his through the golden bars. 

“Come on, you don't want to be standing outside for all eternity, do you?”   
Severus sighed heavily and there was a slight memory of how he died, hurting his throat, although he had no body left that could have hurt. “I do not belong into heaven, Lily. They will not let me in.”  
“Sure they will. Why else would you be here?”  
“To mock me?” Life had always mocked him, why should death be different?

Lily sighed heavily. This was going to be a lot harder than she’d expected. And that she felt James staring at them angrily was not making it any better.   
“Severus Tobias Snape”, she adressed him, ignoring his flinching when he heard his father’s name in his own. “I did not plan to play that card, but you owe me. Big time. So move your ass inside at once, or I’ll come out and it's going to get nasty.” Of course she would not do him any harm, she wasn't even angry at him. And she knew only too well that whatever he had owed her had been payed back for the last years. But this way it was easier. 

Severus seemed to shrink, his skin getting grey, when Lily threatened him and he sneaked into heaven with a face as if he’d been slapped, not even noticing the doorman who checked his name on the guest list.  
Once he made it through, Lily practically threw her arms around him and kissed him thoroughly, so that it took the black-haired man a moment to recover and ask: “Did I miss something?”


	2. Past: Halloween

It had started the night they died. Lily and James just had gone through the golden doors and settled into their little home, made out of clouds, when they found their own mirror. Later on they were told everybody had one to see what was going on down on earth. In heaven that was like watching television, just without commercials - and therefore most of the dead prefered watching the living. 

While James went on grumbling about how Voldemort could have killed him so easily, why he didn’t even stand a chance, Lily immediately went to see how Harry was doing. He had not yet showed up here and how could a baby be evil enough to end up in hell? So he had to be alive. 

Lily switched on the earth-watching-function of the mirror and noticed that her thoughts worked as a remote control. Within a second she saw Harry in his crib, and her own dead body next to it. “Oh, you are so brave, my love”, she whispered as Harry was only looking out of his crib with confusion, but he didn’t cry.   
Then she noticed something dark moving in the room and thought Voldemort had come back to finish what he started, but instead she saw a skinny, dark-haired young man who came into the room and broke down crying. “Severus”, she breathed, her eyes growing wide.   
Now James stopped ranting and sat down next to her. “What a creep”, he commented, when Snape cradled the corpse in his arms and cried. Never had Lily seen him cry. Not even when he wanted to apologize in 5th year. Not even when she went to visit him in the summer holidays in the earlier years, when his father had beaten him up pretty badly. Not when his mother went away without saying a word or taking him with her. He never cried. But he did now. And Lily looked at James furiously.   
“How dare he touch my wife?”, Potter asked, not noticing Lily. “How dare he come near you? I should have beaten the shit out of him when I still could.”   
“You DID”, Lily said, her voice nothing more than an icy whisper. “You did, again and again. And he has every right to be there. He is my best friend!” And she knew it was true. No matter how much she might have hated him in the last few years, no matter how much he hurt her and how bad he might have turned, she could see now, that there was still good left in him. And she hated herself for letting him go. What had she done? Was she the reason he went down this dark path? Had she been his only connection to the good side in him, his only hope not to break under the pressure of being a muggle raised half-blood in Slytherin?


	3. Past: Inner turmoil

Severus became an issue between Lily and James over the years. Whenever James was gone to visit his dead family members, to go and play golf or whatever he did, now that he had all eternity, she watched either Harry or Severus. And both broke her heart each time she saw them. Harry was treated even worse than she had expected from Petunia and her idiot husband and Severus?   
Lily had seen him break down in front of Dumbledore. Had heard every word he said. And she couldn’t stop hating herself for utterly destroying him so badly. Now she knew that if only she had given him a sign, he would have been hers. And she was sure he’d never become a Death Eater if it had not been for her to push him away. To make them all he had left.

But what was even worse than her own guilt was his feeling of being guilty. Over the years she had seen him work with Dumbledore and the order. But never had she seen him move on. No woman in his heart, not even in his bed. She wished so hard for him to find happiness, but he seemed to be too much in love with her to even look at anyone else. He was living a half-life, nothing more. Only existing, not living, and only to make up for his mistakes.   
And whenever James came in and saw her watching Severus, he made nasty comments, called him names. In the beginning Lily thought it was because he was jealous. But soon she noticed that it had nothing to do with her. Not even with how they died. James just never grew up. He died as a manchild and now he did not even work on becoming an adult. Not even in death could he let go of old grudges. And as much as Lily loved her husband, she began to hate him, too. Feelings fighting inside her and it got worse with every passing day.


	4. Past: Parting of the ways

To be fair, there were times when Lily hated Severus, too. Oh, she understood the victorian flower language he used the first time he had Harry in class, because he taught her when they were children. And she could forgive him how he treated the boy on that day because of what he said. But apart from that he was a real dick when teaching the boy.   
She knew how it must have hurt him, she understood. But that was no reason at all to treat an innocent boy this badly! And she was furious whenever she saw him being a bully to Harry. And to the others as well, although mostly he was only a bit too strict and not exactly evil or bad. Still, where was the soft, sensitive boy she once knew so well? Why was he there, when he cried himself to sleep every night and not when he gave classes? 

But then there were the times when she was so grateful that he was there, watching over the boy, no matter how much Severus must hate him. She saw him try to save Harry in his first Quidditch game, although James kept insisting that Snape had been the one to hex him. But Lily knew better. She had seen Quirrell’s face and she had seen the open concern in Severus’ eyes. How desperate he was to help. 

Lily saw how he threw himself between Harry and a werewolf, even though she knew only too well that this creatures were his worst fear - thanks to James and Sirius. And James had nothing better to do than to complain about how Severus treated Sirius. Twelve years dead and James still behaved like an idiot. 

Of course, when they were summoned to the graveyard by Priori Incantatem she did not mention any of it. Not Severus and not how she and James were always fighting. The few moments she finally had with her son were too precious and she had to keep him save so he could escape Voldemort once again. 

In Harry’s fifth year she could not take it anymore. When the boy protected himself against Severus’ Legilimency in slipping into his teacher’s memory after Severus insulted James, all James could do was to get agitated, complaining about Severus being an idiot and deserving everything James and his friends had did to him. But Lily knew which memory Harry had seen. Her son never mentioned it to anyone, but she saw Severus pull it out of his mind and hide it away in the Pensieve. Not the memory itself, but the memory of revisiting the memory with Harry and she could see his son looking at a teenage Severus up in the air. The worst moment - well, maybe except the day she died. The mudblood incident. She did not know if Harry had seen it all, but even if he did not, what happened before was bad enough. 

This night she did not go to sleep with James. She took the mirror and moved out, asking for a home of her own. She could not stand her husband anymore. It was okay that he was angry to be dead. It was okay that he did not exactly fall in love with Severus. But being a insolent jerk towards the man who was trying his best to keep Harry save, no matter how much looking at the boy hurt, was more than she could take.

The next years she slept with the mirror next to her in the bed. She knew he would not feel it, but she found solace in the knowledge that Severus was not alone at night anymore. And no matter how often she watched Harry, she still saw what her friend had to go through. How much he sacrificed for her, again and again. 

_I must be strong  
and carry on._


	5. Present: Always

Finally she had him in her arms, kissing him again and again, although Severus still looked too confused to do anything but stand there until Lily exclaimed: “Shit. I … I have to go. Don’t move, I’ll be back soon.” 

She felt the pull of being summoned once more, but this time she deliberately kept some distance to James and only focussed on Harry. Her son was about to die, she realised. And when she came back, she took Severus’ hand and rushed to her house, not stopping for a second to explain. 

Lily used the mirror to see Harry, but for some painful moments nothing happened. Then she saw … that was Narcissa,wasn’t it? Damn, she looked old. But that didn’t matter. She talked to Harry and the boy nodded. “He’s alive”, she whispered and clung to Severus as if her life depended on him, crying and shaking with as much force as her aethereal body had. 

“Would you do me the honour and explain?”, Severus finally found the words, still not exactly understanding what was going on. Of course he knew that he was dead. But everything else was still a blur. 

“What exactly do you want to know?”   
“Let us begin with: How can I be here? If there is a heaven, shouldn’t there be a hell as well?”   
Lily smiled at him. “Do you really think you’d belong down there after so many years of fighting for the good side? Of … doing it all out of love? Severus, have you never heard of love being the purest magic there is?” Her long, thin fingers caressed his cheek and he felt himself drown in her eyes. 

“Next question”, he said, because he did not trust himself not to cry if he did not change the subject. “What about James?”   
“What about him?”   
“Well, if I were your husband, I would not exactly be pleased to see my wife exchange affections with anybody else.”   
Lily smiled at him. “Till death do us part. I sticked to that and he had 14 years afterwards but … “ She shrugged. “I loved him once, you know. I knew he was a jerk but I actually fell in love with him. Maybe because it was easy, maybe because back then we were right for each other. I want to believe it. I mean, we have Harry and he’s just ..extraordinary. So it had to be right. But … I changed after I died. And he did not.” 

For two years she had known that she did not want to live with James anymore and for almost as long she had realized that she’d fallen in love with Severus - maybe again? She was not sure what it was back then. Why one single word could have hurt her so badly. But what had happened was not to be changed and so she did not think about it anymore, only thought about the future. The eternity ahead of them. And she’d known that she’d wait for him, even if it took a century for him to join her. If he’d still want her, she’d be his.   
“And … Well, I saw you and … how could I not fall in love with you? You’ve done so much to me after I betrayed you. Our friendship. We were even when you told Voldemort about the prophecy and still you fought for me. Even long after I died. You even … never …. “   
Severus blushed and Lily stopped. She did not want to embarrass him. Instead she changed the subject, just a bit: “So, Severus Snape. Would you have me? Do you want me to be yours?”   
The newly dead smiled, for the first time in over twenty years, openly and happily. “Always.” 

_'Cause I know I ~~don't~~ **do** belong  
Here in heaven_


End file.
